All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

The Gorefather!

Opening Statement

It's tough to know exactly what to make of Contraband, a gangster film
directed by esteemed Euro-horror kingpin Lucio Fulci. Made between Zombie and City of the Living Dead, two of the
his most popular fright flicks, Contraband is a seeming tribute to
American Mafia films like The
Godfather as well as the violent crime thrillers known as
"poliziotteschi" that proliferated in Italian cinemas in the 1970s.
Depending on your mood, this could be considered either an extra-gory mob movie,
or a horror film about a ring of cigarette smugglers terrorized by a group of
killers. Either way, it falls somewhat short of its intended mark.

Facts of the Case

Smuggler Luca Di Angelo (Fabio Testi, Revolver) is blamed when a routine
boat delivery of black market cigarettes goes wrong. Turns out that the coast
wasn't clear, and the gangsters are forced to dispose of their cargo
before the flatfoots pinch the whole operation. Soon after, Luca's brother is
murdered, and he is forced to determine if there is a traitor in his midst
dealing out retribution for his carelessness, or if it was a hit contracted by
The Marsegliese (Marcel Bozuffi, The French Connection), a French
drug Don looking to take over the supply routes already established by Luca's
gang. As Luca comes under mounting pressure to succumb to the rival cartel, his
wife Adele (Ivana Monti, The Five Days of Milan) is kidnapped and his
Mafioso compatriots start showing up dead. To avoid joining them, Luca must
quickly formulate a plan.

The Evidence

While beloved by gore fans for his overstated special effects, almost every
time Lucio Fulci stepped outside of the horror genre, he made a bigger mess than
a decaying zombie on a fresh carpet. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, his
efforts to diversify produced some of the most stubborn stains on his
résumé yet. Look no further than the misguided sword and sandal
debacle Conquest, the laughable sci-fi
effort Fighting Centurions, or his spaghetti western misfire Four of the Apocalypse for proof that
Fulci may have been a master of horror, but little else. While nowhere near as
bad as some of his work, Contraband still proves a problem for the
veteran director, as he has a little trouble sneaking "excitement"
past Customs.

Contraband was obviously intended to be a straight crime thriller,
but it rarely works as such. The film immediately gets off on a bad foot, with a
completely lifeless speedboat pursuit that has Luca and his fellow cigarette
smuggling cronies escaping from the harbor police. Chase scenes are a staple of
the poliziotteschi genre, but Fulci completely botches his opening with
lackluster directing and editing. Lingering scenes of boats zipping away and
bird's-eye-view helicopter shots might be visually interesting, but they aren't
in the least bit suspenseful. Clearly still operating in horror mode, Fulci
seems to be saving his quick cuts and explosive shocks for the gore scenes; it's
as though he doesn't trust his action sequences to excite an audience the way a
squished eyeball might.

Horror fans know there's but one thing to look forward to when they pick up
a Lucio Fulci DVD, and that's outrageous screen deaths. Although gorehounds must
patiently wait through a good deal of plot exposition before the skull fragments
really start flying, I have little doubt that the brain blow-outs, burn victims,
and shotgun blasts to the throat make this the goriest gangster film ever made.
Now, while Fulci makes excellent use of these kinds of effects in his beloved
horror films, they seem needlessly gratuitous and far-fetched in such a
comparatively realistic flick. I'm all for a healthy dose of blood-splattered
fun, but I was too frequently drawn out of the story by the distracting and
extreme nature of the death scenes. One particularly nasty moment has The
Marsegliese introducing a blowtorch to the cheek of a pretty young drug mule. As
he progressively burns through several layers of skin, it's hard to bring
yourself back to something as trivial as the moral implications of Luca's
"say no to drugs" problem.

The cast is mediocre at best, playing mostly interchangeable gangsters whose
only purpose in the film is to die a grisly death, like teenage machete bait in
a slasher film. The sole standout is Testi, who puts in a charismatic
performance as Luca Di Angelo. Maintaining a detached aloofness, he still
manages to make his character quite sympathetic. A typically sordid scene in
which Luca's wife is raped and tortured over the phone as a message to the
conflicted gangster is both brutal and unforgettable, but in this case, these
qualities are attributable the humanity that Testi instills in his character,
and not to Fulci's sadistically lingering camerawork.

Now, don't get me wrong—this is one of Fulci's best non-horror
efforts, and his fans are definitely going to want to check this out. It never
gets boring and certainly delivers on the gore front, two things that can
certainly not be said about some of his other misfires like Four of the
Apocalypse. The overall structure of the film is fairly kinetic, which more
or less makes up for the lack of tension in the individual scenes. Also helping
Contraband is an exciting twist ending that tones down the violence to
slightly more believable levels.

Circulating in a cut version for many years, Contraband has finally
been restored to its full bloody glory with a decent transfer from Blue
Underground. Discounting one or two moments of severe and distracting print
damage and some persistent grain, the film looks quite good. The image is fairly
sharp, with solid blacks and nicely rendered colors that emphasize Fulci's muted
palette. The Dolby mono soundtrack is less impressive, revealing its age and the
limitations of its origin. The track itself is clean, but don't expect much
fidelity—effects are thin, and the trivial disco score is robbed of all
impact. The quality of the voice acting in the English dub itself is tolerable,
although an original Italian track would really have made things more
interesting. Sadly, the extras amount to little more than an overlong trailer
and two text biographies for Testi and Fulci.

Closing Statement

Although Contraband simply cannot not hold a candle to Blue
Underground's other enjoyable Italian crime thrillers, Revolver and the Rififi update Grand Slam, it is still worth a look for Lucio
Fulci fans, representing arguably his best work outside the horror genre.

The Verdict

This film is guilty of being a lesser release in the Fulci canon. Tonight,
Contraband sleeps with the fishes.